Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: When we're little, the idea of a midday nap can
Speaker 1: launch us into a tantrum. We don't want to sleep.
Speaker 1: We want to stay up so that we don't miss anything.
Speaker 1: As we get older, that desire to remain awake bleeds
Speaker 1: into the nighttime hours, until we find ourselves welcoming the
Speaker 1: sunrise with a crowd of drunken revelers we met the
Speaker 1: night before. Then we hit adulthood and the only thing
Speaker 1: we want to do is lay in bed and sleep,
Speaker 1: or watch reruns of the Office until we nod off.
Speaker 1: But one woman allegedly got to live the dream in
Speaker 1: more ways than one, so to speak. Her name was
Speaker 1: Carolina Olson born in eighteen sixty one in Sweden. She
Speaker 1: was the second oldest of five children, but didn't attend
Speaker 1: school like her four other brothers. Her mother took care
Speaker 1: of the house and felt Carolina should learn to help
Speaker 1: as well, so missus Olsen kept her at home On
Speaker 1: top of the household chores, she also taught her how
Speaker 1: to read and write. When Carolina was fourteen, she finally
Speaker 1: started attending school like the other children. Things were going
Speaker 1: smoothly for about a month until one day she came
Speaker 1: home in immense pain. Her tooth hurt, but her mother
Speaker 1: didn't believe that that was the cause of her ailment.
Speaker 1: She felt that Carolina was under the influence of witchcraft
Speaker 1: or an evil spirit, so she told her to sleep
Speaker 1: it off. What her mother didn't realize, though, was that
Speaker 1: the toothache would be the least of the girl's problems.
Speaker 1: Carolina tucked herself in and fell asleep. The next morning,
Speaker 1: she was still asleep. No matter what her parents tried,
Speaker 1: they could not wake her up. She hadn't died, she
Speaker 1: was simply unconscious and sadly, they didn't have enough money
Speaker 1: to send for the doctor, but the town banded together
Speaker 1: to pay for one instead. In his opinion, Carolina had
Speaker 1: fallen into a coma. Her mother tended to her around
Speaker 1: the clock, feeding her two glasses of milk each day. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: her doctor was taking matters into his own hands. He
Speaker 1: penned a letter to the editor of the Scandinavian Medical
Speaker 1: Journal for advice. Soon, other doctors began writing back with
Speaker 1: several pain Carolina visits of their own. They remarked that
Speaker 1: her fingernails, toenails, and hair didn't seem to be growing,
Speaker 1: and one doctor in particular, a guy named Johann amel Almblod,
Speaker 1: transferred Carolina to his hospital in eighteen ninety two for observation.
Speaker 1: He watched her for a month, during which time he
Speaker 1: conducted a number of tests to verify the severity of
Speaker 1: her condition. He poked her skin with sharp instruments, sent
Speaker 1: small jolts of electricity through her body, and even altered
Speaker 1: her diet, but nothing worked. When the thirty days were over,
Speaker 1: he sent her home with a diagnosis of dementia paralytica,
Speaker 1: a neurological disorder typically seen in people suffering from syphilis.
Speaker 1: But Carolina didn't have syphilis. She simply slept and slept
Speaker 1: and slept, although her father claimed to have seen her
Speaker 1: crawling around on her hands and knees a few times
Speaker 1: before scuttling back to bed. Otherwise, she slumbered as her
Speaker 1: mother took care of her every need, feeding her, changing
Speaker 1: her clothes, and bathing her, and after that years went by. Sadly,
Speaker 1: missus Olsen passed away in nineteen oh four, and Carolina
Speaker 1: lost one of her brothers in nineteen oh seven. She
Speaker 1: was then taken care of by a maid, but one day,
Speaker 1: without warning, she finally woke up in nineteen oh eight.
Speaker 1: She had been out for a total of thirty two years.
Speaker 1: Her maid had walked in on her, jumping up and
Speaker 1: down and crying. She was emaciated and sensitive to light
Speaker 1: for a short time, but Carolina also didn't recognize her
Speaker 1: remaining brothers who came to see her, nor could she
Speaker 1: speak to them easily. She hadn't uttered a word in years.
Speaker 1: It was as though she had been reborn, but luckily
Speaker 1: she still knew how to read and write. In fact,
Speaker 1: she retained much of what she had learned before her coma.
Speaker 1: In the weeks following her awakening, Carolina was visited by
Speaker 1: scores of reporters looking for a story. They came from
Speaker 1: the United States and Europe to find out everything they
Speaker 1: could about the miracle girl who had slept for three decades.
Speaker 1: She also underwent a battery of psychiatric tests to gauge
Speaker 1: her facilities, and was found to be completely healthy. Mentally speaking,
Speaker 1: she was the same girl she had been all those
Speaker 1: years before. Carolina Olsen managed to live another forty two
Speaker 1: years after that, dying from an inter cranial hemorrhage in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty at the age of eighty eight, finally slipping
Speaker 1: into a slumber that none of us ever come back from.
Speaker 1: This story starts with a bit of a personal anecdote.
Speaker 1: The other weekend, I went to the movies and I
Speaker 1: did what you have to do when you're at the movies.
Speaker 1: I spent way too much money on a massive bag
Speaker 1: of popcorn, And as I sat in my seats, eating
Speaker 1: one delicious kernel after another, I started to wonder, how
Speaker 1: did popcorn become the movie theater snack. That was so
Speaker 1: curious that I went home and I did a little research,
Speaker 1: and it turns out the story behind movie theater popcorn
Speaker 1: is actually pretty amazing. You see America's first movie theater
Speaker 1: open in nineteen o five in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was
Speaker 1: called the Nickelodeon. You'll probably recognize that is the name
Speaker 1: of a modern children's TV network, But this is where
Speaker 1: the word originated. The price of admission was a nickel,
Speaker 1: and the ancient Greek word for theater was odeon, hence nickelodeon.
Speaker 1: The Nickelodeon was a classy place too. The goal was
Speaker 1: to emulate the experience of seeing a live theater performance,
Speaker 1: so thick curtains surrounded the movie screen and the floors
Speaker 1: were lined with expensive carpet. The first movie ever screened
Speaker 1: there was a drama called The Great Rain Robbery. It
Speaker 1: was just ten minutes long and it was totally silent,
Speaker 1: and it was also a huge hit. After this movie,
Speaker 1: theaters started springing up all over the country, but they
Speaker 1: had pretty strict rules, the most shocking among them no
Speaker 1: snacking allowed. There were a couple of reasons for this.
Speaker 1: Of course, first, the carpets right, theater managers didn't want
Speaker 1: their nice rugs getting covered in crumbs. And second, snacks
Speaker 1: that were already associated with entertainment, like potato chips and yes, popcorn,
Speaker 1: were crunchy. But the movies didn't have any audio. Imagine
Speaker 1: going to a silent film and all you can hear
Speaker 1: in the background is people chewing their food. Definitely not ideal.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until nineteen twenty seven, a full twenty two
Speaker 1: years later that the first movie with sound debuted. This
Speaker 1: led to a huge spike in ticket sales. The nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty movie theaters in the US sold about ninety million
Speaker 1: tickets per week. And now that the whole listening to
Speaker 1: people chew thing wasn't a problem, you would think that
Speaker 1: theater managers might be a little more lax about snacking. Right, well,
Speaker 1: sort of. By this point, street vendors had noticed that
Speaker 1: the outside of a movie theater was a great place
Speaker 1: to find customers. Moviegoers would buy popcorn outside and then
Speaker 1: sneak it into the theater in their coat pockets. Theater
Speaker 1: managers realized that there really wasn't any way to get
Speaker 1: around this, so rather than fight human's natural inclination to
Speaker 1: smuggle snacks into a movie theater, they decided to go
Speaker 1: directly to the street vendors. They gave the salesmen an
Speaker 1: ultimatum either take the popcorn carts elsewhere or pay a
Speaker 1: daily fee to do business outside the theater doors. For
Speaker 1: the most part, the vendors agreed to give a cut
Speaker 1: to the theaters, and the arrangement worked well. But then
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen thirties, the Great Depression took hold
Speaker 1: of the United States, entertainment became a luxury that people
Speaker 1: weren't so quick to spend money on anymore. Those record
Speaker 1: breaking ticket sales from just a few years before I'll
Speaker 1: dried up. If the movie industry was going to make
Speaker 1: it through the depression, theater owners needed a way to
Speaker 1: increase profits, and popcorn was the perfect way to do it.
Speaker 1: The ingredients were extremely cheap. A bag of popcorn kernels
Speaker 1: that cost ten dollars could last a theater for years.
Speaker 1: Small bags of cooked popcorn cost customers anywhere from five
Speaker 1: to ten cents, which was a profit margin of about
Speaker 1: eighty five percent. This was the point in history when
Speaker 1: movie theaters began relying less on revenue from ticket sales
Speaker 1: and more on the money they made from selling concessions.
Speaker 1: Snacks had become their saving grace. Once outright banned from
Speaker 1: the movies, theaters now played advertisements encouraging patrons to grab
Speaker 1: a bag of popcorn and a soda before the film began.
Speaker 1: By nineteen forty five, more than half the popcorn eaten
Speaker 1: in America was enjoyed in front of the big screen.
Speaker 1: So the next time you're at the movies, snacking on
Speaker 1: some overpriced popcorn. Remember your purchase is part of a
Speaker 1: larger story, one in which the humble popcorn Kernel saved
Speaker 1: the American movie industry from financial collapse that I think
Speaker 1: certainly qualifies as curious. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided
Speaker 1: tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting
Speaker 1: Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me
Speaker 1: Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make
Speaker 1: another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
Speaker 1: about it over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until
Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.